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It seems like there's a billion of these companies now. All of them somehow able to create a playlist based on your previous likes or dislikes.

Finetune from what I've heard is a ton better than Pandora, but I don't keep track of either of them.

As of 2007, Finetune was available outside the US where Pandora wasn't. http://lifehacker.com/234553/finetune-pandora+like-internet-radio

Things may have changed though.

The original function of Caps Lock is nuisance. If you are on Windows you can set Caps Lock to do an actually useful thing which makes your life a whole lot easier:

http://lifehacker.com/5278802/iswitchw-finds-windows-as-you-type

Yeah, and if I could buy snow leopard for my PC, I might actually consider it.

If you look around you might find a few ways to do that...

http://lifehacker.com/5279977/choose-a-legal-pronouncable-catchy-business-name

Thing Drive Tricks

Give-away Drives

Thing Drive Tricks

Give-away Drives

Linux runs on just about anything, these days, and if it doesn't, NetBSD does.

Get an ipod that can run IPodLinux, plug in one of these, and a pair of these, and you'll be ready to dodge bullets. ;-)

With the above, they can sell as many of their crippled, gimped notebooks as they want; you can use that stuff and the hacked ipod to create your own system. If you don't mind the weight, there's still this old trick, too.

Microsoft can do whatever they want. All we need to do is route around them.

Stop being afraid of them; they have no power. We can do whatever we like, and there is nothing they can do about it...for the simple reason that there are so many more of us. Microsoft are only one company.

If I could some how use the iPhone in my pocket to text or surf and see the text in front of my face rather than looking down all the time would be a plus.

someone just released an app that lets you compose email against a live feed from the camera: Email n' Walk

FYI, Lifehacker has an article today on how to set up and use WindowsXP mode, includes links to software to check your Intel/AMD CPUs for compatibility.

FYI, Lifehacker has an article today on how to set up and use WindowsXP mode, includes links to software to check your Intel/AMD CPUs for compatibility.

Just did a quick search, and came up with this:

http://lifehacker.com/software/command-line/show-hidden-files-in-finder-188892.php

haven't tried it yet.

from Lifehacker

As for being as slick as OS X, well, spoken like somebody who obviously doesn't own a Mac. It's nice, but there's no way it's even in the same neighborhood that the ballpark for OS X is in. I'm gonna light a small fire here, but I wish a super talented artist would redesign the widget set for Gnome, it's very very dated as it stands now. KDE is far better looking but even it is getting long in the tooth.

I can't certainly agree that Gnome looks and feels very dated. I can't believe relate to the article claim that it's really slick. Responsive perhaps but certainly not slick as OSX in looks.

Kubunutu 9.04 + KDE 4.2.2 is however right up there in terms of both look and feel, and is very responsive. KDE 3.5.x might look dated, but KDE 4.2.x certainly isn't. Now when I use OSX/Leopard it feels dated in comparison to my new Kubuntu/KDE4.2.x desktop.

I can't help but feel that Conical are leading with the wrong foot with Gnome being their main platform they promote, it looks so ugly. It's a shame that many peoples first experiences of the free desktop will be based on Ubuntu and it's dated desktop look and feel purely because of Gnome.

from Lifehacker

As for being as slick as OS X, well, spoken like somebody who obviously doesn't own a Mac. It's nice, but there's no way it's even in the same neighborhood that the ballpark for OS X is in. I'm gonna light a small fire here, but I wish a super talented artist would redesign the widget set for Gnome, it's very very dated as it stands now. KDE is far better looking but even it is getting long in the tooth.

Speaking as a user of KDE 4.2, Gnome, Windows XP, and OS X Leopard, I've come to a conclusion about the widget sets and other GUI theme details:

After 5 minutes using a platform, I don't care about them, as long as they're reasonable. I just want to get my work done. Maybe I'm just saying that because at this point in my life I'm perpetually short on time at both home and work. But...

• Any non-ugly background image is fine, as long as it doesn't make it hard to see desktop icons or other windows.

• Any icon set is fine as long as the icons' purposes are clear, or I can figure out their meaning quickly.

I figured this was a lesson that we as a community learned after Compiz/Fusion get fairly mature. Eye candy is cute, but ultimately its only real benefit is for getting otherwise uninterested people to consider using Linux.

For my day job, I'll take better security, faster booting, easier programability, and broader application support over pretty icons any day of the week.

from Lifehacker

As for being as slick as OS X, well, spoken like somebody who obviously doesn't own a Mac. It's nice, but there's no way it's even in the same neighborhood that the ballpark for OS X is in. I'm gonna light a small fire here, but I wish a super talented artist would redesign the widget set for Gnome, it's very very dated as it stands now. KDE is far better looking but even it is getting long in the tooth.

Lifehacker has a well laid-out and illustrated introduction avec screenshots.

http://lifehacker.com/5144757/first-look-at-windows-7s-backup-and-restore-center

If you use Firefox, try Better YouTube.

With it you get:

• No Automatic Playback
• Watch movies using an embedded video player (QT on my Mac), instead of Flash
• Hide comments and other sections by default
• Download button for YT videos
• Larger video window

(I have no association with this, I just finally can stand YouTube now.)

I had a 2GB SD card from my camera show up as empty when I put it into my card reader a few months back. I used the (free) utility that I found on Lifehacker to recover the 4-5 months worth of family pictures off the card. It worked great. The pics all had strange filenames and I had to sort based on the pictures metadata rather than the file creation date, but that's to be expected.

http://lifehacker.com/software/file-recovery/recover-a-borked-flash-drive-with-photo-rec-314963.php

Just this morning, Lifehacker posted about this very topic: http://lifehacker.com/5205221/acidrip-for-linux-rips-dvds-with-two+click-ease

How about "Nuclear-grade duct tape"?: http://lifehacker.com/5159500/nuclear-grade-duct-tape

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Calibre, which was also featured on Lifehacker sometime back.
It is based on PyQT (as well as dateutil, mechanize, lxml, BeautifulSoup) . They even have a CoverFlow like interface which is pretty good. I suppose it is usable on Win, Lin and Mac.
You have to provide a login/password to librarything (or a few other alternatives) and you can then search and tag for the book's metadata and cover images from these sources automagically.
I personally also use them to archive my PDF's that I download from the internet, tag them, specify authors and other metadata (incidentally, most of the papers that people create from latex do not have any metadata).
I see the developers pushing out a release every week, so it is under pretty active development. I dont know if there is a plan to integrate any indexing features in it, but I suppose the developers are open to it.

Oh and here is a benchmark test performed by Lifehacker showing Vista as being faster to reach the desktop from a boot menu than XP, and it being faster from boot to the login prompt. Not conclusive by any means, but perhaps we can trade meaningless examples for a few hours? Your turn, find a site slating Vista for it's boot times, and I'll come back with one praising Vista.

It'll be fun...

Since you only have one person that needs to access the files I would just use Desktop Search. Personally I like Google Desktop ( http://desktop.google.com/ ) & Copernic Desktop Search ( http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/index.html ). Here is an article reviewing some of them - http://lifehacker.com/400365/five-best-desktop-search-applications.

The main thing that you need to do is OCR the documents when you scan them in (You can convert non-OCR PDFs into OCR PDFs but I don't know anything that can search them before you put text in them). On Linux the two mains ones that I know of are Tracker and Beagle (http://www.linux.com/feature/143259).

I know these are not all open source or have ewb interfaces but they are really easy to use. You just put the files in folders and point the desktop search at them. Great for someone that doesn't know a lot about computers.

"...Microsoft says Windows' share of the US netbook market has ballooned from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February..."

To know why, we need to look at the alternative:

Linux: This offer more often than not, suffers from the following issues:

1: Poor and often inferior hardware specs as compared to systems loaded with Windows

2: Microsoft became smart and did that fast! They were about to retire Windows XP but decided to let it live.

3: Software on Linux systems still sucks big time, though folks at KDE appear to be doing a better job than those at GNOME.

4: Folks around Linux still cannot understand that in the software world, choice while good, breeds confusion. On this very point Bill Gates stated it bluntly while referring to UNIX. He said..."With so many different (Unix) versions, said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., 'There's always been Tower of Babel sort of bickering inside Unix, but this is the most extreme form ever. . . . This means at least several years of confusion.'"

Who gained out of this confusion? Microsoft.

If you "people" ruin this FREE offering, it will push them to put more crap ads into the stuff I actually pay for.

Let it be. Don't ruin it. Appreciate it for what it is: Internet TV. Don't make it into a DRM war because it's not: You haven't bought anything.

I'll explain what it won't push them to do and at the same time I'll explain why there was or ever could be anything resembling a "DRM war".

It won't push them to realize that if this offering is ruined or could be ruined, it is because of their own failure. Think of Hulu as an organism; think of its users and their quite-predictable response to things like DRM as the environment. An organism that denies the reality of its environment instead of working with those realities will fail. No amount of wishing will change this.

The media companies, however, seem to be like spoiled children in a couple of important ways. For one, they have completely controlled the distribution of their works and have used that control to dictate the terms of this industry for a very long time. Widespread technology that threatens this control is a relatively new phenomenon. The strong and obvious sentiment that I keep seeing from the various media companies (particularly the members of the RIAA/MPAA) is that they believe the market should adapt itself to the companies. In every other industry that doesn't use techniques like artificial scarcity, it's considered basic business sense for the company to adapt itself to the demands of the market.

To give a specific example of Hulu's failure to understand this, that means that if your users want to do something innocuous like stream your video (including ads) to an HDTV instead of a computer monitor, you leave them alone or you make this easier instead of coming up with ways to stop them. Try to stop them and they'll find a way to do it anyway, only while they're making that effort, they'll probably go ahead and remove your ads too. All of this because Hulu can't just admit that trying to tell its users which display devices they may use is unreasonable and unnecessary.

Naturally responses like this create an adversarial relationship between those media companies and their paying clients. Nowhere do you see this more clearly than the assumption of bad faith inherent in DRM: it effectively says "you might infringe our copyrights, and we will treat you as such whether or not you give us a reason to think so". Media and software companies are the only industries that seem to believe you can treat customers this way without alienating them. Then when customers are alienated and respond with some form of backlash, they blame the customers for doing so instead of themselves for giving them cause. I am amazed that anyone believes this is a good business practice, or that anyone who believes that is ever taken seriously. The amount of hubris this shows is just incredible.

When I say "paying clients" above, I should define what I mean because I am deliberately using the term loosely. The way I am using it means anyone who makes money for those companies by using their products and services in the intended fashion; this includes people who view ads and thus generate ad revenue. That's why your argument of "you haven't bought anything" is moot. Even though Hulu's viewers are not making payments, there is a quid pro quo and Hulu is not a charity. To say that those legitimate users who generate ad revenue for Hulu should have absolutely no voice in how Hulu is run constitutes a rejection of supply and demand. Again I can't name another industry that thinks it can thrive while ignoring the demands of its customers.

So, unfortunately I think you are right. It will push them to compensate in some manner without solving the actual problem. The example you gave of more advertisements in purchased media is a valid possibility. It won't push them to

The XBMC guys already made a plugin after the last hulu change. It'll take a few hours and a new one will be made.

Especially if you SEND the user all the info they need, how hard is it to decode functions? There are crackers out there that take decoded assembly to figure out how to bypass DRM, what makes Hulu think their implementation will be any more difficult?

It is technically possible, and doesn't even look to hard, although I have not done it, to install Mac OS on your own hardware. http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/build-a-hackintosh-mac-for-under-800-321913.php or newer http://lifehacker.com/348653/install-os-x-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required/

It is technically possible, and doesn't even look to hard, although I have not done it, to install Mac OS on your own hardware. http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/build-a-hackintosh-mac-for-under-800-321913.php or newer http://lifehacker.com/348653/install-os-x-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required/

I haven't tried 7, but at least from what I hear it does have two features that interest me: minimize other windows by shaking the one I'm using ("aero shake") and making items on the taskbar appear as icons instead of as an icon and a text description.

Aero Shake in XP withAutoHotkey

To only show icons in the taskbar open regedit and go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

In right-side pane, change value of MinWidth to -300 and reboot, you may have to tweak the number a bit but -300 works great on my system.
I know this works in XP, I haven't tested it in Vista.

Also to get rid of the start menu I use RocketDock for a MacOS like dock and Launchy to pop up an enhanced Run dialog (and I mean really enhanced). Some people prefer Executor

Also I've tried off and on for years to use only Linux but I've become so proficient with XP that I after a while I get frustrated with not being quite as productive. So until I can force myself to get better at using Linux than I am at Windows I'll continue using Linux as a secondary OS. I'm not flaming Linux by any means, I've just gotten too used to my setup in XP and the tons of modifications I've made to it that it's difficult to give it up and invest the time to match it in some sense with Linux.

There's probably some reluctance on manufacturers' part to hand out class-IV lasers for $29.99 with mail-in rebate.

This reminded me of an article I read a couple of months ago (http://lifehacker.com/287252/turn-a-flashlight-into-a-handheld-burning-laser) which might just happen to show why they would be reluctant to hand out said class-IV lasers.

I fixed this by enabling a second 'dev' profile on Firefox. No dev extensions (firebug, LiveHTTPHeaders, WebDeveloper, etc) are enabled in my normal profile. This speeds things up considerably.

http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/geek-to-live--manage-multiple-firefox-profiles-231646.php

Hulu needs to let Boxee use them as a chabnel again

          Done.

http://lifehacker.com/5157524/bring-hulu-back-to-boxee-and-xbmc/

Worse than rebooting is maintaining two separate configurations. For example, if you use an email client, you configure it on both sides. Browser, same thing. And so on.

If you use the same apps in both operating systems it's not hard to synchronize data files such as email and browsers. I though it was hard myself, however after some research I found out it can be easy to do. I have a MacBook Pro that runs Leopard and I've been thinking of installing Ubuntu to dualboot. What you do, er what I'll do if I install Ubuntu, is setup 3 partitions. One partition for each OS and the third as the user folder or directory. My browser is Firefox and using the profile manager in each OS you can tell Firefox where to put the Firefox user folder, so put it on the user partition in the same folder. Do the same with email, set Thunderbird to use the same folder in both OSes. Here's a webpage from Lifehacker on to Use a Single Data Store When Dual Booting. And here how to use Mozilla's Profile manager.

If you want to dualboot, or if you already do, I hope this helps.

Falcon

I was fairly confused, even after i RTFA, about how you talk into an ipod touch, since they don't come with either a microphone or bluetooth.

Google helped me find this Lifehacker Article that is way the hell more useful than the linked one. Basically you have to buy some sort of external mic that clips onto your touch, then use your headphones to listen to the call. To me, this awkwardness seems like sort of a deal breaker for the practically of an iPod TouchPhone.

If there were a way to hack a bluetooth module in there, it could be a whole different deal. You could talk using a handsfree bluetooth device, and in a brilliant circlejerk of redundancy, even tether your internet connection to a traditional cellphone with a data plan.

TOS episodes have also been available on YouTube for a while:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=20048A7C541C941C

And as this summation and others relate, MacGyver and other series are also available:

http://lifehacker.com/5061973/youtube-gets-full+length-episodes-of-star-trek-macgyver

Essentially the same series had already been made available for streaming at least several months ago.

Well, I can say that the themes work great, at least: http://lifehacker.com/5147379/get-hps-dark+themed-mini-look-on-your-ubuntu-desktop

I *think* this was posted on Lifehacker yesterday, that you could download and install the theme that this uses. Here's the link:
http://lifehacker.com/5147379/get-hps-dark+themed-mini-look-on-your-ubuntu-desktop

I tried it last night, on 8.10, and didn't have much luck. I'd really like a dark theme, but none of the ones I find seem to work well. Sure, I'll grant that the theme *did* look good. But it screwed up the controls so that iGoogle looked like crap and I couldn't read half the HTML elements. I like the window border of the theme, but if I only use that I lose the all-black task bar. All in all, I thought Firefox looked pretty bad under this.

Also, I still didn't like the icons. Why do 99% of the gnome icon themes suck? They all have this ugly volume control, and ugly 4 bars for the wireless connection. I've found some nice minimalist OSX-like icons themes, but they are always black and don't work well with the dark interfaces!

I did like the mini-style of the theme. Changing back to some of my others I realized how much space is wasted on some of the menus and the bars. Just my $.02.

"Don't notify me and don't display the icon (not recommended)"

But did they fix the [calc] bug? Or does it still produce 'scientific' and 'wrong' results for 3+2*2?

Ages ago. http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/141253.aspx

The calculator in Windows 7 is also vastly improved: http://lifehacker.com/5078756/windows-7s-calculator-bundles-real+life-uses

Check under options->plugins->runner, there's a keyword cmd which invokes (what else?) cmd.exe with the command you give it. I added my system32 directory to the catalog (+.bat, .exe, .com file types). If you want to see the control panel too, open the control panel up and also open C:\Program Files\Launchy\Utilities\Special Folders\ . Drag all of the control panel icons into it. Boom, shortcuts that are invokable from Launchy.

There's also Executor too.

So the entire summary is Thelasko's opinion , with a one sentence description that links to shuttleworth's blog? Perhaps a true summary of proposed changes in Ubuntu desktop notifications would have been more informative.

Well after years of posting long winded descriptions and never getting published, I started posting one sentence summaries. Of course, Murphy had to show up with his stupid law...

Anyway, I originally found the bit about this being controversial here. I decided to go straight to the source and post from Shuttleworth's blog, rather than a third party's.

I have a WRT54GL flashed to run Tomato Firmware and I can easily block all ads from my router without having to install Adblock on every computer I control. It's called management. http://lifehacker.com/5060053/set-up-universal-ad-blocking-through-your-router

Is it possible that Apple actually hijacked TraceMonkey from Firefox? Yes I know Firefox is open source and that TraceMonkey is too, but still--any chances of it happening?
Here's the link to a Lifehacker article I saw a while ago...

I don't know about launching apps, but boot time is supposedly faster in 7: http://lifehacker.com/5082336/windows-7-vista-and-xp-bootup-benchmarks-updated

http://lifehacker.com/software/speech-recognition/hack-attack-make-your-macs-speech-recognition-work-for-you-215764.php http://bbs.macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=24662

If it is a good question. But if you ask a question about the GPL without first reading the GPL, then you're not asking a good question.

No, but if you also happen to have a Windows Media center PC or can "find" one, you can follow this guide http://lifehacker.com/396881/turn-your-xbox-360-into-a-streaming-netflix-player , pretty much the only other way I've heard of, besides boxee, for streaming.

Get OpenOffice + the Google Docs Plugin:

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd

Writeup
http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-download/sync-openofficeorg-docs-with-google-docs-332055.php

Problem: destroyed. God you suck.

While it's just a band-aid, there's a greasemonkey script to collapse it.

As for your points 4 and 5: there is a "privacy enabled" fork called iron, use that instead. And in regard to a *quite* release, it was all over the tech news and even popped up in mainstream media.